Since 2010, Cook has directed the School of Veterinary Medicine’s Dairyland Initiative, which focuses on providing dairy producers the information they need to build better housing using sound scientific principles that Cook and his vet school colleague Kenneth Nordlund developed.
In Wisconsin, pollinator-dependent crops account for over $55 million in annual production, but at the same time Wisconsin has been at risk for honey bee colony loss.
University of Wisconsin Madison Agronomy Professor Dan Undersander told farmers attending the Vita Plus Dairy Summit held recently in Madison, that the bulk of nutrition of an alfalfa plant is in the leaves. Disease, rain, and harvesting equipment can strip the nutrition-packed leaves from the stem and leave cows wanting more.
Noted: He served on the UW-Madison’s College of Ag and Life Sciences Board of Visitors and in 2011, was appointed by Governor Walker to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Board.
Noted: Wedig is a senior at UW-Madison where she is majoring in life sciences communications. She grew up in Darlington and got involved in agriculture through her dad’s landscaping business and FFA.
Ballmer is a junior at UW-Madison, where she is majoring in dairy science with an agricultural education emphasis. She is a 2015 alumnus of Clinton High School and the Clinton FFA Chapter.
She said she hopes to earn a master’s degree in agricultural education after receiving her undergraduate degree in dairy science. She hopes to use her training to become an agriculture educator and FFA adviser or an Extension 4-H and youth development educator.
The ingredients dairy farmers feed their cows impact overall cow health so much that Dr. John Goeser believes that universities should merge veterinary science with nutritional science. Goeser, an adjunct assistant professor in the UW-Madison Dairy Science Department, is also the nutrition director at Rock River Lab, Inc.
The competitors discussed how Farm Bureau can help first-generation farmers and ranchers get started in agriculture.
Alison Wedig and Connor Willems will be advancing to the state competition at the Young Farmer and Agriculturalist Conference Dec. 1-3, 2017 in the Wisconsin Dells.
“We provide information and inspiration to help new growers make smart business decisions about production, markets, pricing, capitalization and labor,” says John Hendrickson, the school’s coordinator and outreach specialist with the UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study shows that the shift of more than 7 million acres into cropland led to massive releases of carbon emissions into the atmosphere after a 2007 federal law mandated ethanol in gasoline.
Joe Benish (Mike’s son) is a part of the farm’s livestock and equipment LLC and fully expects to be the next generation farmer in the family. The 26-year-old UW-Madison Farm and Industry Short Course graduate, has always planned on a farming career and started a custom farming business early on.
“My two years in Farm Short Course was a great experience,” Joe says. “I and two other former classmates talk almost daily. If I have a problem, chances are one of them have had the same problem and have an answer that I can use.”
There’s a lot of buzz in some parts of the dairy industry — and among consumers — about A2 milk. A CBS News story recently highlighted the push toward A2 milk and how some people think it relieves them of dairy intolerance symptoms.
Noted: This year she collaborated with an outside group for the first time, working with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geology Museum to create a maze in the shape of a trilobite, the state fossil.
The University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension is a natural fit with University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chancellor Rebecca Blank said Wednesday about news that the agency would be absorbed by her campus as part of a sweeping reorganization of the UW System.
“SnapPlus solves several problems at once, related to distributing manure and fertilizer efficiently while meeting guidelines for protecting groundwater and surface water,” says Laura Good, the soil scientist who has led development and testing. “The program helps to maintain crop fertility without wasting money or endangering natural resources.”
The program is used on 3.36 million acres, or about 37 percent of the state’s cropland, says Good.
